Mike and I have had an unusually cold and hard day, with an ice-cold headwind coming out of the north, chilling us down far more than the –27?C temperature would by itself. My feet never got warm, and we started getting dangerously chilled. After five hours we had to give up and seek shelter in our tent. Going against the wind, we weren’t even able to go fast enough to compensate for the southerly drift. We are now further south than when we started out this morning. And that is extremely depressing.

If this trend doesn’t change, providing drift in the right direction, I don’t see how we have any hope of reaching the North Pole. Last night we drifted 3 km. When we’re drifting at a rate of seven or eight kilometres in 24 hours, it eats up half the distance we manage to walk. The weather conditions are most unusual – that’s for sure.

With a northerly wind – right now it’s blowing from the west – the air current are ice-cold and the air much harsher. We walked as far as we could today; it would have been irresponsible to continue. Both of us were severely chilled and we have to avoid frostbite. Mike has had problems with his hands, and I had difficulty keeping my toes warm. So we have to be very careful.

In addition to the hard weather, ice conditions have been very difficult. We swam across one lead today, too. We’re hoping tomorrow is better. Hans Ambühl will soon give us the weather report.